THAI ONE ON

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DEMOCRACY TAKES TO THE STREETS IN BANGKOK & NEW YORK



THAI VOTERS UNHAPPY WITH POLITICAL GAMES BRING NATION TO HALT;
AMERICAN FAUX-POPULISTS STAGE CORPORATE-SPONSORED "TEA PARTIES" TO AVOID PAYING TAXES

YOUTUBE
"City Hall Tea Party Protest (NYC) 15"
Laid-off stockbrokers at lunchtime?



International Conference Called Off Due To Street Demonstrations In Pataya; Nothing-Burger In D.C.

In Thailand, they don't sit idly by while corrupt incompetent politicians destroy their country and their way of life. They storm the barricades, push back the army and the police, and shut down business and government. Until the will of the people is obeyed, the people obey no man's will.

It seems like a good system. It might be hard to manage in the United States, for a number of reasons. We're a much bigger country, in area and population. It would be difficult to organize a nationwide protest of this nature on an American scale. We're nowhere near as concentrated or centralized as Thailand. Shutting down just Washington DC or New York City wouldn't do it. Mounting simultaneous actions in all the major cities and every State capitol would be nearly impossible, not only logistically but culturally as well. Our very diversity works against mass action on a national scale.

It might not be possible to organize a nation-wide strike of Southern farmers and Northern businessmen, Midwestern factory workers and West Coast professionals, "flinty" New Englanders and "redneck" Texans, conservative Montanans and liberal New Jerseyans, blacks, whites, Asians, Latino's, Native Americans, immigrants, college grads, high school drop-outs, men, women, gays, straights, old, young, Fundamentalists, mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, Hindu's, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, urban, rural, suburban, and exurban Americans.

Even if it were possible, most of the major cities have large forces of crack riot police, and contingency plans that involve the use of deadly force even on peaceful demonstrators. If the local cops could not be counted on to slaughter their own citizens, there is always the State militia, the National Guard, and the regular Army. They have shown a willingness to kill Americans with whom they disagreed politically in the past. And their political masters have no compunction about ordering them to fire on Americans.

There are other ways of bringing a system to a halt. A more workable alternative might be a passive protest, a refusal to work or shop or attend school or travel or invest or comply with regulations or pay taxes. A jamming of phone lines and Internet hubs. Blocking key traffic points in our already gridlocked transportation networks. Cell phones and the Internet could be used to organize localized action on a hit & run basis. Counter-propaganda could be created and disseminated to encourage support for such actions. But coordination would be required that has never existed in the United States, until recently. Coordination requires access to the media. But the media are now entirely controlled by and subservient to the corporations. The faux-populist "movement" know as the Tea Parties is coming from the Right, the recently ousted "Establishment," not the Left.

In Thailand, disruptive actions are being funded by a former Prime Minister who was removed from power for corruption some years ago, and banned from the political process. He has taken it upon himself to disrupt the new government at every turn: First getting two of his own puppets installed as Prime Minister, and then organizing street protests against his puppets' subsequent removal. Poor Thai farmers from the Southeast Asian backwoods are being paid to jam the cities and bring the nation to a halt, while counter-demonstrations against such anti-democratic and corrupt actions have only resulted in a more perfect gridlock. The army and the police do nothing.

There is the possibility of similar action here. The American corporate propaganda network is being used right now to try to effect some sort of nation-wide protest against the US government. Not for the benefit of the people, but for the corporations, who don't want to pay their taxes, even though they wallow in government money themselves. Naive and under-educated fools are being manipulated by the tame corporate media to help the corps keep our money, as in the Bush years.

The corporate leadership of the inchoate racist anti-democratic forces that failed to steal the most recent Presidential & Congressional Elections has been trying to find a way of continuing to destroy the way of life of average Americans ever since "liberal" black Democrat Barack Obama and his allies trounced them at the polls and ran them out of Washington. All the radical Right can do now is attempt sabotage. Much of their support is coming from a foreign businessman, Australian crypto-Nazi Rupert Murdoch, and his cohorts among America's corporate closet Fascists. Fox News has been turned into a kind of rebel radio station broadcasting from the fringes, calling for political assassinations and jamming of the machinery of government.

Why has there been no government action? No investigations, no arrests, no shut-down of these saboteurs? Why have the people not risen up against it? Are Americans so soul-dead that they cannot move a muscle in defense of their own country, their own way of life? Apparently, yes.


REUTERS
"Thailand's "red shirts" revel after summit shutdown"
Now here's a TEA Party! But, as in America, for the wrong side, and guided by the rich.

' Barrelling through a thin line of troops, hundreds of red-shirted anti-government protesters in Thailand hurtled through a plate glass window -- and tumbled into the venue of the East Asia summit. "We've won -- the summit is over," shouted Aey, one of "red shirts" who support ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. "We'll return to Bangkok now, to rejoin the protest there," she added. "We'll finally get Abhisit out." The protesters say Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who came to office four months ago through parliamentary defections engineered by the army, is "illegitimate." Abhisit cancelled the summit after it was stormed and imposed a state of emergency to allow leaders to depart safely. Drivers and motorcyclists sounded horns while protestors on foot, wearing red bandannas, waved red flags and held aloft placards and pictures of Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and is widely believed to be bankrolling the protests. '

YAHOO NEWS
"Rioting follows state of emergency in Thai capital"
"Change" you can get with larger bills.

' Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, regarded by most of the protesters as their leader, called for a revolution and said he might return from overseas exile to lead it. "Now that they have tanks on the streets, it is time for the people to come out in revolution. And when it is necessary, I will come back to the country," he said in a telephoned message broadcast on loudspeakers to followers who surrounded the prime's minister office. Political tensions have simmered since Thaksin was ousted by a military coup in 2006 for alleged corruption and abuse of power. He remains popular for his populist policies in the impoverished countryside, while his opponents — many in urban areas — took to the streets last year to help bring down two pro-Thaksin governments, seizing Bangkok's two airports in November for about a week. '

FOX NEWS
"Tea Party Protests Create Online Sales Boom"
"Explosions" of sales that result in a net loss. A "grass-roots" movement funded by business. Push it, Fox, push it!

' Other independent retailers are reporting similar explosions in sales. "I'm not really positive what we've made this week -- we've been so busy packing things away," said Jay Taylor, COO of Patriot Depot, which sells conservative books and gear online. Taylor, who said tea party stickers and shirts are powering his "recession-proof" business, isn't giving all his proceeds away. "We are making a little money but we're definitely more concerned with getting the message out," he told FOXNews.com. Yet some organizers are seeing costs outweigh their profits -- and are choosing to operate at a loss. Taylor is partnering with the Augusta, Ga.-based Reagan.org to send tens of thousands of tea bags north to Washington for a massive tax day tea dump. Though Reagan.org is asking for about $1 per bag, they estimate they'll end up losing money in the transaction. "What we figure is that we'll probably end up losing a little bit of money on it," said Joshua Bolin, executive director of Reagan.org, who told FOXNews.com that his organization accepted requests to send 30,000 tea bags packing in just the first two days of its promotion. Sink or swim, profit or plunge, online purveyors have been taken aback by the success of their small business ventures. '

HEARST NEWSPAPERS: BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE, BEAUMONT, TEXAS
"Dozens protest taxes at "Tea Party" in Orange"
"Dozens"! WOW! That's WAY more than "TWO'S"! What a "broad-based" "popular" "movement"! Even though the right-wing media is giving out the organizers' schedules & phone numbers! Way to take a side, "journalists"!

' The Tea Party in Orange was part of a national movement. A number of the events will be held Wednesday, the day federal income taxes are due. In Beaumont, a gathering will be held beginning at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the U.S. Post Office on Walden Road near Interstate 10. More information is available through (409) 466-7063. '

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